It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving. – Saint Teresa of Calcutta
When Father John introduced his vision for the future of Catholic engagement within our Parish Family and the larger community around us, we were given three years by the Diocese to accomplish the fundraising activities to turn it into a reality. The Life Center, Catholic Youth Organization, and Catholic Adult Organization will all require funds to not only build, but to incubate and grow into the vibrant and enlivening environment we all know will support children, families, and experienced individuals in the life and faith journeys. While we were given optimistic projections on the potential goals we could achieve if we were able to communicate this vision, we were told that we should not expect more than 27% of our Parish Family to contribute. That seems to be the standard level of engagement of Catholic fundraising at the local levels nationally. I can tell you now that Saint John has clearly blown that statistic completely out of the water, with about 2100 of the 3400 families of Saint John participating in one way or another. 62% participation is a clear illustration of the vibrancy of our community, as well as a clear validation of the vision. Thank you to all of you who gave in prayers, support and gifts to make our future come true.
We did have lofty intentions, with a $8 million Core Goal to accomplish the above vision, an additional $2 million for our Challenge Goal to renew our other facilities, and finally an additional $4 million to reach our Pinnacle Goal of $14 million. We not only achieved our Core easily, we exceeded it at well over $9 million. God must be on our side as well, as Hurricane Irma has now damaged or destroyed nearly every facet of our campus that we had articulated in our Challenge Goal and our Pinnacle Goal to renew. We will be moving forward with all those projects in the next months. So, with the support of the Diocese and our amazing Parish Family, we are going to fulfill nearly all the components of our entire massive Capital Campaign vision. I hope you will stay tuned for all this effort as it unfolds to completely transform Saint John into the third place for all the community, both socially and spiritually!